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Friday night, North Carolina will open what is undoubtedly the highest anticipated season the Tar Heels have had in a very long time. The Heels come into the season ranked preseason No. 9 in the USA Today Coaches Poll and No. 10 in the Associated Press Poll.
UNC football has come a long way in such a short time. When Mack Brown returned to Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels were coming off a three-win season in 2017, and a two-win season in 2018. Brown was able to turn the ship around quickly, grabbing seven wins in 2019, eight wins in 2020 with an appearance in the Orange Bowl, and now a preseason top 10 ranking.
The hype surrounding this team. Players and coaches know it and are excited about the Tar Heels’ potential. How have they handled all of this preseason hype going into the 2021 season?
When Brown met with the media this week, he touched on how quickly the program has grown since his return and touched on the expectations for this season.
“I would say that we’re way ahead of where I thought we would be going into season three,” Brown said. “We still haven’t proven that we’re ready to take another step. Eight wins is fine, that’s a good measuring stick for us, but we’re gonna have to prove it, and that starts on Friday night.”
Brown says the Heels aren’t a flash-in-the-pan, the program will remain highly relevant for the foreseeable future.
“We’ll have better players next year than we have this year,” he said. “Now, we’ll lose a great quarterback, but our team will have better players, so this program is here to stay. Whether we win Friday night or not, whether we have a great season this year or not, whether we’re in the top 10 or not at the end, or whether we’re playing Clemson for the championship, I’m excited about where we’re headed.
“I never dreamed we would be talking about the things we are talking about, but that’s just talk, now it’s time to start proving this stuff. We’ve talked enough, time to win. If we don’t win Friday night, it doesn’t mean the season’s over, it means we got a lot more work to do. We got too many question marks right now that aren’t answered to start anointing ourselves for something big.”
Expectations for programs that haven’t really done much in a while can be weighty. Players spend all offseason hearing about how good they will be without even playing a game. It is a new season, and Brown believes his team somewhat has a grasp on how to deal with the “sugar and honey,” as he’s called it a few times.
They certainly have recent personal experience with not handling it well.
“Usually, the more a guy’s played, and the older he is, the better he understands,” Brown said. “Our problem is not with the older guys. They were fifth in the country last year going to Florida State and laid an egg and stunk. And then came back and fought in the second half, and lost part of our season last year when we probably shouldn’t.
“They get it, they know that. They understand now that we went from 5th to 25th in three hours and 15 minutes. It didn’t take us long to get kicked out. So, ole number 10, if we leave Blacksburg on that bus disappointed, ole number 10 is gonna die, or nine or whatever it is, and it will drop to 25 really fast.”
So, what’s the Hall of Fame coach’s advice to his club, which has 53 first or second-year players among the 88 scholarship guys on the current roster?
“What I told them to do is be the best team you can be,” Brown said. “You worry about you. If we play the best we can play, and don’t win the game, then we weren’t the 10th best team in the country in preseason, so let’s figure out where we are, and get ready for Georgia State.
“That’s the way we’ve approached it. You worry about you. You be excited, you have fun, you compete, understand it's going to be a tight game...Don’t come to me and tell me you’re surprised that they’re gonna have a surge at the first of that game with so much energy because they’ve been mad since our game last year. You just play. You be you, and let’s see how good we can be.”
High expectations aren’t foreign to junior quarterback Sam Howell. He is currently enveloped by Heisman Trophy, NFL draft top-pick, and Carolina-and-the-CFP talk.
Voted the Preseason ACC Player of the Year in July, Howell has a mature, well-crafted approach to the hype adorning every element of the program right now. He hears it, and they hear it, but he deflects it, too.
“There’s been a lot of talk about this team on the outside, a lot of noise, a lot of good talk,” Howell said. “We’re just ready to get out there on the field and show what we can do. We’re tired of people talking about it, we just wanna get out there and do it.”
What happens if the Heels lose and the positives from the outside turn into negatives?
“I try not to think about losing,” he said. “Obviously, everyone knows the hype we have and the anticipation we have going into this season… We just try to control what we can control, go in there with the same mindset as we do every game, and try not to let the pressure get to us.”
The same thing goes for the Heisman Trophy, for which he is one of the leading candidates right now.
“From a personal standpoint, I try not to think about it like that,” Howell said. “As soon as you start worrying about all of that other stuff it just adds pressure, and I don’t like to do that. I just try to take it one day at a time, just try to make sure I’m doing everything I can to make sure I put my team in the best position to win a game. That’s kind of the way I look at it every single week.”
Whether it is challenging for an ACC championship, a spot in the CFP, or Howell making a push to become the first Tar Heel to win the Heisman, UNC’s staff and players will lunge forward into the fray Friday evening.
Their readiness to handle the hype will show out, one way or another.
